[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[June 23, 1998]
[Pages 1030-1033]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner for Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Garry Mauro
June 23, 1998

    Thank you. Thank you, Garry, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, 
for the warm welcome, and even more, thank you for being here for Garry 
Mauro.
    I don't know what to make of that eulogy you gave me at the end of 
those remarks. [Laughter] It reminds me, the other day I was in 
Cleveland--this is a true story--I was in Cleveland the other day, and I 
went with Congressman Lou Stokes who is 
retiring after a long and distinguished, wonderful career in Congress on 
a motorcade through his Congressional District in inner city Cleveland, 
and we went by all these little schools, and then finally we stopped at 
a grade school.
    And I was there because a wonderful community program called City 
Year which may have a chapter in Texas, I think they do, and it has a 
couple thousand kids around the country, they're all part of our 
AmeriCorp program, our national service program; they were having their 
national convention in Cleveland.
    But I went to this elementary school where some of our young 
volunteers are working with the kids in the inner city. So I gave them a 
little talk, you know, and then I went down the line, and I was shaking 
hands with all the teachers and the parents and as many children as I 
could possibly shake hands with. And I got to the very end of the line, 
and there was a little kid standing there that barely came above my 
knees. He was probably 6, I guess he could have been 7, but I don't 
think so. He looked up at me, and normally when I see kids like that 
they say, ``I've seen you on television,'' and I say ``Thank goodness.'' 
[Laughter] This kid said, ``Are you the real President?'' I said, ``Yes, 
I am.'' He said, ``And you're not dead yet?'' [Laughter]
    Then I realized that he thought Presidents were--you know, he had 
studied George Washington and Abraham Lincoln--he thought a part of the 
job description was you couldn't be living anymore. [Laughter] And some 
days I wonder whether he's right or not. [Laughter] But at least I died 
with honors from Garry's introduction.
    Let me say to all of you I think you're doing a good thing here. And 
I think it's even more important that you're doing it because you know 
you have a long way to go. But I would like to tell you a story or two. 
In 1991 when I started running for President, only my wife and my mother 
thought I could win. My daughter thought I had a chance. [Laughter]
    When I entered the New Hampshire primary I was fifth among the 
Democrats starting out, and the incumbent President was at a 75 percent 
approval rating. When I won the nomination of my party on June 2, 1992, 
with the victories in California, New Jersey, and Ohio, I was running 
third in the public opinion polls; 6 weeks later I was first in the 
public opinion polls--6 weeks later.
    Go back a few years; I met Garry Mauro over 25 years ago when we 
worked in 1972 together. Two years later I ran for Congress. I ran 
against a Member of Congress who had 99 percent name recognition and an 
85 percent approval rating in 1974. And I was zero, zero. On Labor Day I 
was behind 59 to 23, on Labor Day, not June the 28th, on September the 
whatever it was that year. And I got 48\1/2\ percent of the vote. If I 
had had another week to campaign, I could have won. I say that to make

[[Page 1031]]

this point: When people are satisfied with good conditions, and they 
like their incumbent officeholders personally, they tend always to say 
they are for them and so would you if you didn't know him or you didn't 
happen to be in the other party.
    In order to make an election in this kind of an environment it is 
necessary that people believe there is a reason to think about the 
election and that there is a choice to be made and that the choice, if 
it is made, would be good for them. And I think you've got what you need 
here. You've got a good candidate who is a wonderful human being and an 
exemplary public servant with a record that anyone could be proud of. 
You've got the right issues--and I want to say a little more about that. 
And you've got, if you all do your part, an adequate support base so 
that people in your vast, huge State will be aware that you have a good 
candidate, and the right issues, and there is a reason to make a choice.
    You also have, in my view, the best of all possible worlds because 
Garry Mauro can just get out there and run as himself and run a 
completely positive campaign and only talk about those areas where there 
is an honest disagreement.
    Now, then it determines--it really turns on the same thing that 
really will shape the elections in November here for Congress or that 
will shape the attitudes. How do people respond to good times? I'm very 
grateful--I'll just amplify what Garry said--I am very, very grateful 
that today in our country we have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, and 
the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, 16.1 million new jobs, the 
lowest welfare rolls in 29 years, the first balanced budget and the 
surplus we believe this year in 29 years, the lowest inflation in 32 
years, the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and the highest 
homeownership in the history of the country. I'm grateful for that. And 
I think that--[applause]----
    I also know that the American people deserve primary credit for 
that. But the decisions made by our administration, more than half of 
which were made under withering partisan criticism from the leadership 
of the other party, had a lot to do with creating the framework in which 
it became possible for the American people to do these great things. 
Now, having said that, the question is: When times get good, what do you 
do? A lot of people say, ``Well, I've been working hard for years, and 
I'm tired of thinking about insecurity and difficult things, and you 
know, I would like to take it easy, and I don't want too much to 
change.''
    Well, there are two problems with that. One is nothing ever stays 
the same anyway, ever, not in an individual life, not in the family's 
life, not in a business, not in a State's life, not in a nation's life. 
The second is all you have to do is pick up the paper every day to know 
that things are changing quite a lot around the world, and there are a 
lot of outcomes that aren't clear.
    I'm going to China tomorrow, as all of you know, against a backdrop 
of the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan which occurred after years 
and years and years in which--just since I've been President we had 
gotten an indefinite extension of the nonproliferation treaty, we had 
gotten all these countries to agree to control their missile technology, 
we passed the Chemical Weapons Convention, we passed the Comprehensive 
Test Ban Treaty. We had 140 something countries around the world sign 
it. We and the Russians began to lower our nuclear arsenals dramatically 
and destroy nuclear weapons, and it seemed that we were on a constant 
and stable path. Now we have a new challenge.
    I'm going to China at a time when we are appreciative of the 
discipline with which the Chinese have managed their economy and the 
fact that they haven't yet felt the need to devalue their currency. Why? 
Because of the economic difficulties in Indonesia, the challenges that 
Japan faces and any number of other Asian countries. It's a big deal 
because a huge percentage of our economic growth has come from foreign 
trade, about a third of it, no small measure, from Asia.
    So I tell you this because it's well to be reminded that whether 
you're the President of the United States, the Governor of Texas, or the 
mayor of Seattle, Washington, you know when times like this come along, 
if you relax in an atmosphere of change, you'll spend the rest of your 
life, if you've got a conscience and a brain, kicking yourself in the 
behind because you didn't take advantage of them to do every single 
thing you could to meet the challenges of the day and prepare for 
tomorrow. That is the case that has to be made not just in Texas but in 
every community in this country.
    And if you look at what Garry talked about--let's just take--what 
are these big challenges?

[[Page 1032]]

Some of them have to be dealt with by us here in Washington. For 
example, we've got to reform Social Security and Medicare so that when 
the baby boomers retire, we've still got a social safety net, but it 
doesn't bankrupt our children and their ability to raise our 
grandchildren. We owe that to the next generation. That has to be done 
in Washington.
    There are things that we need to do in other areas in improving the 
quality and access to healthcare, in improving public education and 
access to college--and we've done a great deal there--in proving we can 
preserve the environment while we grow the economy--if you just take 
those three things--in extending economic opportunity to people who 
still don't have it even though we've got a low unemployment rate.
    Now I will mention those four things. In all those areas we have a 
role to play. But in none of those areas can any of those endeavors be 
successful unless the States are doing the right thing. Yes, we want to 
move more people from welfare to work. The States are basically in 
control of that program now.
    So it matters more who the Governor is now in terms of whether 
initiatives are taken or not than ever before, at least in my lifetime. 
And because I used to be a Governor and I believe in the system, I've 
off-loaded a lot of responsibilities to the States. But in doing that, 
you know, you run the risk--you get the benefit of having people closer 
to the grassroots issues make the decisions--you run the risk that if 
you've got somebody who is relaxing when they ought to be moving that 
the consequences won't be so good.
    Now you just take the issues Garry reeled off here. I'm trying to 
get the Congress to approve a budget that will help to build or repair 
5,000 schools, that will help 100,000 more teachers to be hired to lower 
class sizes in the early grades, that will connect the classrooms and 
the libraries of this country to the Internet, that will help to improve 
teacher training and accountability and train more teachers to be master 
teachers, nationally certified master teachers to help all the others in 
their schools. But none of this will amount to much unless there is a 
complementary commitment at the State level where the primary 
constitutional responsibility for public education is lodged to do those 
things.
    And I don't think there is a person in this room that believes--I 
don't care how big Texas gets; I don't care how may billionaires you 
have--I don't think any of you believe that your State will ever reach 
its full potential until you can say, ``We're proud of our university 
system, and now everybody who deserves it can afford to go'' number one, 
and number two, ``Now we're proud of our kindergarten through twelfth 
grade too, we've got the best system of elementary and secondary 
education that the world can offer.'' And no one believes that any State 
in the United States can make that claim today, no one.
    So, I say to you I'm glad you've got these good times. I am grateful 
to have been given the chance to serve at a moment in history where my 
experience as a Governor enabled me to see what I thought our country 
needed to do. I am grateful that the consequences have been as they have 
been. I'm very grateful the American people have done all the things 
they have done. But I'm telling you we're living in a dynamic world 
where things are changing more rapidly than ever before, where we've got 
to learn to live together across the lines that divide us both at home 
and with others in the world, and where it all begins with whether we 
are treating individuals with the dignity that I think is embodied in 
this Patients' Bill of Rights that I've advocated at the national level, 
that you've advocated at the State level, and most importantly with the 
commitment to develop the capacity of every young person. There is 
nothing more important, nothing.
    The last point I want to make in this regard is that there are a lot 
of things we can do at the national level to deal with what I predict to 
you will be one of the three biggest issues of the next 40 years, which 
is how to do better at preserving the environment as we grow the 
economy.
    Now, you know that's going to be a big issue. There are a lot of 
things we can do at the national level but an enormous amount of 
environmental protection, an enormous amount of resource conservation, 
an enormous amount of figuring out what kind of flexible, sensible ways 
you have to adopt to grow the economy while you preserve the 
environment, that's done at the State level. I know, I was a Governor 
for a dozen years. And I dealt with all kinds of national 
administrations that had different philosophies on the environment.
    There is not a person in the State of Texas, nowhere--this is no 
disrespect to the current

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Governor--there is nobody in the State of 
Texas that has a better background than Garry Mauro for making the right 
decisions about how to protect the environment and grow the economy.
    I want you to think about that. I want you to go home to Texas and 
talk about it. And I want you to forget about the public opinion polls. 
The only poll that matters right now is the one inside your heart, 
inside your mind. If you believe that your candidate is as good as I 
believe he is, if you believe that the issues are as important as I 
believe they are, if you believe he's on the right side of the issues, 
and most important of all, if you buy what I just said about the nature 
of this time, yes times are good, yes we are grateful--but it just 
imposes on those of us who have done well enough to show up at this 
fundraiser tonight a bigger responsibility to see that we use these good 
times to prepare for our children's future. You're going to have a fine 
election, and you're going to be proud of what you're doing.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:47 p.m. in the Mount Vernon Room at the 
Sheraton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. George W. Bush of 
Texas.